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Obama attacks McCain’s economics as out of touch

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called his opponent’s economic principles “out of touch,” during a speech Monday at Cross Orchards Living History Farm before nearly 6,000 Coloradans.

Citing the country’s recent economic downturn and the insolvency of investment banking giant Lehman Brothers, Obama said it would be too costly to bet on another four years of Republican economic policies.

“We must end the policies of the last eight years,” Obama said, calling the economy the “central issue” of the election.

Obama said his opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, simply “doesn’t know” how to reorient the economy’s downward trajectory.

“He doesn’t get what’s happening between the mountains in Sedona where he lives and the halls of power,” Obama said.

The Illinois senator, cheered on throughout his speech, pivoted from his critique of McCain’s policies into attacking him for finally coming around to the “change” message.

Obama said he found it curious that after months of highlighting experience as the best measure of presidential candidates, McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are now telling people how they plan to change Washington.

“Change isn’t about slogans,” Obama said. “It’s about solutions.”

The McCain-Palin campaign fired back in a statement, alleging that Obama, too, has been the embodiment of politics as usual.

“His nonexistent record of bipartisan reform isn’t — which is why he isn’t ready to deliver the change America needs,” said campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.

During Obama’s nearly 40-minute speech, he spent almost no time addressing Colorado or Western issues.

That, however, did not stop his surrogates at the rally from lambasting McCain’s recent mixed comments about renegotiating the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which protects Colorado’s water from being sopped up by Arizona and California.

“As Western Slope voters, we need to seriously take this into account,” state Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, told the crowd.

Days after McCain told a southern Colorado newspaper he was open to renegotiating the compact, he wrote a letter to Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., explaining that he did not mean what he said.

Obama’s speech Monday came the same day Palin addressed voters in Golden.

Obama’s stop in Grand Junction was his first Colorado event since accepting the Democratic presidential nomination before more than 80,000 people Aug. 28 at Invesco Field in Denver.